ARTBABYART is 10 years old and counting, our Silver Anniversary. I think we went over the 2 million unique visitor mark in July 2008! The height of the site’s popularity was in the 2004 – 2007 time period, when we were averaging over 20,000 uniques and 100,000 page views a month, wow… But like all things it’s time to make a few changes.

After 10 years of hand HTML coding for each page (over 400+ pages, not including images) and redesigning the entire site twice in 10 years, it’s time to go to the BLOG! It’s quicker, can change direction in an instant and it’s just darn easier to keep things updated and fresh. We’ll still be updating, featuring art and artists on the main site but we’ll use this Blog to stay on top of things.

So mark your calenders, July 2009, we’re starting something bigger and even better!

About ARTBABYART.COM

Home Brewing is the only way to describe how this site was built. Back in February of 1999, I spoke with a handful artists and checked out their websites (or lack of one). This got me more interested in just how the Arts was being presented over the internet. There was at the time, d’Art and Guild.com, great sites but they seemed a little stiff and way too focused on the Art and you could never find enough info about the Artists, who were far more compelling, IMAO, than the work itself. My interest is not just that beautiful clock, but the inside workings that makes it tic. So I decided to start a website focusing on the Artists.

The name ARTBABYART.COM, for those of you that were around Baltimore in the late 90’s, is kind of a take off on that TV commercial Pimlico Race Track was running. It featured, if I recall, different characters bellying up to the track rail during a race and yelling, Go Baby Go. As far as designing the website, I paid some guy $35 at a BN to just tell me where to upload the index file, at the time I was using Netscape Composer and armed with a 1.2MP Polariod Digital Camera and of course a flatbed scanner. It was the beginning of a long term relationship.

A few of the “original” Artists featured were, Randall Gornowich, Robert and Michael Carrico, Bruce Bowersock, Susan Hirschmann, Mark Cottman, all full time professional artists. But slowly, I came upon a countless number of other Artists that wanted to be featured yet worked full time in another profession. Their stories tended to be the most interesting and poignant of all. I am proud to say we have featured Artists from every Continent and from all walks of life. By design or accident, over the years the site evolved in not only featuring Artists but also into publishing politcal OPED’s, covering cultural events and more!

Thanks to all the Artists that have contributed over the years, and a big thanks to all that have visited this site.